Affordability is becoming a major challenge across the GTA, and fees slapped on homeowners are part of the issue, but so are escalating land costs and the profits reaped by developers who are getting civic approvals to build higher, more lucrative, buildings or have farmland rezoned for more valuable residential construction, said James McKellar, associate dean of York’s Schulich School of Business, in the Toronto Star Tuesday.

Kevin McKague is researching how low-income countries can maximize the objectives of all individuals in value chains. His research, conducted in Bangladesh, focused on improving incomes of 35,000 small and landless dairy producers.

What most people would call a nest box, York University doctoral candidate Scott MacIvor likes to call a bee condo. The nest box is just one of many MacIvor has placed around the city. He’s hitched them onto everything from trees in quiet ravines to stop signs downtown, as part of a four-year experiment on wild-bee diversity in Toronto that is now in its final year, reported Torontoist.

Two and a half months after Jason Pottinger won his second Grey Cup, the Argonauts linebacker found himself in another contest, fighting for pandas in a mock negotiation at York’s Schulich School of Business, reported The Globe and Mail May 15.

What do children and youth need to know to ensure they are responsible, active and contributing citizens? These questions and more will be addressed at the What’s Worth Knowing: Educating for Responsible Citizenship Symposium Monday.

Tiesenhausen is the 2013 Louis Odette Sculptor-in-Residence in the Faculty of Fine Arts at York University. He will give a public talk about his work as part of his residency, which runs May 6 to 31 in conjunction with the Intensive Sculpture Workshop offered by the Department of Visual Art & Art History.

A team of MBA students enrolled in the Real Estate and Infrastructure Program at York’s Schulich School of Business has successfully defended the school’s title as reigning champion of the Argus Software University Challenge.

“We all believed that we were getting excellent, compassionate care. We responded to one another in humane and even tender relationships, thrown together arbitrarily by our universal health-care system,” wrote York University Professor Emeritus Arthur Haberman in the Toronto Star.

The Humanities, Arts, Science, Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC) will meet this week at York University and other locations in Toronto to discuss new developments in new media, social networking, museum studies, digital humanities and more.

York U received recognition by the editors of Canada’s Top 100 Employers project for creating the President’s Sustainability Council, its Green Office and Sustainability Ambassador programs, and the Res Race to Zero student competition.